Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
I often wonder about the academical world in which i am working. What
premium is placed on creativity?
For example, the university of Pretoria in which i work has some 120
departments organised into 9 faculties. But it has no department of
creativity, what to speak of a faculty of creativity. No other South
African university has also a department of creativity.
It is now 32 years that i am doing research on creativity. I never came
across any university in the world having a department of creativity. Just
to make sure, i made a search with Google on the web. I got only one out
of 33 hits refering to it, namely the Aichi Shukutoku University in Japan.
I will be very happy if any of you fellow learners can inform me for the
better.
How important is creativity to people? Again i made searches with Google
and got the following results:
creativity - 3 330 000 hits
biotechnology - 3 260 000 hits
pornography - 4 340 000 hits
learning - 38 900 000 hits
sport - 42 300 000 hits
money - 66 900 000 hits
business - 172 000 000 hits
Just as a curiosity i made a search with the phrase
faculty of theology
in the second window. I got 16 900 hits. But with
faculty of creativity
i got a mere 75 hits of which only one had to do with a university, namely
the Aichi Shukutoku University in Japan.
What is the importance of creativity? With the follwing double inscriptions
in the first window i got for
creativity biotechnology - 64 200
creativity pornography - 22 600 hits
creativity learning - 1 080 000 hits
creativity sport - 228 000 hits
creativity money - 957 000 hits
creativity business - 1 580 000 hits
So creativity seems to be important for about 10% of the internet population.
But why does it not figure administratively in our educational systems? Is
creativity a too nebulous subject? Does creativity undermine beaurocracy?
I do not know. But what i do know is that a lack of creativity is the most
important stumbling block in the path of success of students at our
university.
Perhaps we do not appreciate enough how much creativity has to do with
authentic learning. In 1971 i gave up a research career in science to
follow my calling as a teacher. In 1972 i observed that pupils who do best
at school are also the most creative in their learning. I formulated the
tenet:
to learn is to create
It is now 31 years later. I believe more firmly than ever that this tenet is
true.
Copernicus changed science forever with his creativity. Einstein indicated
that creativity was his key to success. Yet our educational systems do not
embrace creativity formally. What is wrong? What do you fellow learners
think?
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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